Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by danharaj 3904 days ago
What sort of problems?
2 comments

Getting a guy fired for privately telling a "dongle" joke to his male co-worker while at a conference for example. And then costing the woman who snitched on them and told the internet her own job. (true story)

This kind of BS over the top reactions, among other things.

This is another thing that lands on these threads, like clockwork: one time, a woman freaked out over an overheard joke, complained publicly on Twitter, ended up getting someone fired, and was then fired herself. "And you are lynching the negroes."

That this has nothing whatsoever to do with the comment thread we're on about someone's daughter being called a prostitute at DEFCON is unimportant; what's important is to deploy as many countermeasures as possible to prevent sincere conversation about harassment.

OP specifically asked for examples though.
The same as with any other identity politics, really. It makes it really hard to get shit done policy wise, because when you view everything through the lense of identity politics, every disagreement becomes an attack on you personally even if it is just an honest difference of opinion. While some things should be polarizing, probably, identity politics tends to make things needlessly polarizing sometimes, I've found. It is a useful tool definitely, but when it's the only way you approach policy and political action, it often makes you feel really good and validated even while you're failing to achieve a lot of your goals.

Going into it any further than this is going to require more specific examples, which I'm not willing to do since it will derail the hell out of this thread. Sorry.

You derailed a few paragraphs ago.